Financial Post reviews The Earth’s Best Story

Posted Sep 29 2010 6:00am

The Earth’s Best Story is a complicated tale of sweat, success, naivety, scheming and villainy, recounted by identical twin brothers who founded the first organic baby food company in the United States, only to have it scooped away from them.

The book is fascinating reading: a movie-like entrepreneurial dream realized through stubborn determination and perseverance that ends with a nearly Shakespearean denouement.

The brothers alternate the narrative, beginning with their shared idealism for making the world a better place by developing a nutritious, organic line of food that was safe and healthy for babies.

They are candid about how they started out with next to no skills or connections to draw on to bring their dream to fruition and how they made a series of mistakes that would have derailed nearly anyone else.

The book traces their awkward development into entrepreneurs, the struggle to develop a saleable product that met their ideals and the desperate, never-ending efforts to scrounge up financing. And, how, just when everything seemed poised to pay off for them, it fell apart.

The Kosses’ description of the way some of their investors, and subsequently some of the executives, schemed to oust the brothers from control of the company they created, is gut-wrenching and it’s obvious the wounds are still raw, more than 20 years after the events.

The Earth’s Best brand is now part of a stable of natural-foods controlled by The Hain Celestial Group and the brothers have moved on to other projects. Their memoir is both cautionary and inspirational.